Film Appreciation - God Is Watching You

Cody and Priscilla get trapped in The Funhouse for Film Appreciation.

1981 was the biggest year of the slasher boom, inspired by the success the first Friday the 13th had in 1980 and the first Halloween had in 1978. Universal Pictures was in on the slasher action; not only did they distribute Halloween II in '81, they also brought us The Funhouse that year - and when looking for a director for this one, they turned to a man who had already earned acclaim with a story about young people getting murdered one-by-one: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Tobe Hooper.

While the March 13, 1981 release date would indicate that The Funhouse was rushed into production in the wake of Friday the 13th, that wasn't the case. The Funhouse began filming in March of 1980 and was wrapping production by the time Friday the 13th was released in May of that year.

Hooper packed the opening sequence of The Funhouse with references and homages to horror that came before.

The opening sequence is one of my favorite things about The Funhouse. I used to find it chilling when I was a kid, and that hasn't really changed. The score is so eerie, I love it.

In a P.O.V. sequence much like the one that started Halloween, a stalker wearing black gloves (like a killer in a giallo movie) moves through a room decorated with posters and busts of Universal's classic monsters. They put on a clown mask, grab a knife, and go into the bathroom for a scene reminiscent of a famous moment from Psycho.

With all the horror stuff they show us right away you'd think that's the killer's place!

A young girl is taking a shower when the killer throws open the shower curtain and begins stabbing her. But when the blade touches the girl's body here, it bends. It's fake.

It isn't often that a slasher movie will show the heroine nude at all, let alone in her first scene.

Just made me think there was no way she was going to be the final girl.

The girl is our teenage heroine Amy Harper, played by Elizabeth Berridge, and she has just been pranked by her younger brother Joey (Shawn Carson).

You simply can't call what Joey did a prank, even though other than Amy's justified anger, it's almost played down. It was too invasive and pervy what he did. He could've chosen any other way to scare her, he is a little psycho in the making.

This scene is creepier to me as is than it would have been if it actually was a scene of a killer stabbing someone to death in the shower. I'm used to seeing the latter in a slasher movie, but here Joey burst in on his fully naked sister to pull off his prank. He just got an eyeful of everything.

There's a carnival in town and Amy was going to take Joey to it that weekend, but he just ruined that for himself. Amy won't be taking Joey, but she is going to the carnival on a double date with her friends Liz (Largo Woodruff) and Richie (Miles Chapin) that night. Amy's date is a guy named Buzz (Cooper Huckabee), and this is the first time they're going out together.

Amy is so overdressed for this date; that's not a proper carnival ensemble, it's a dusty and sometimes dirty place, you need comfortable shoes and pants, not a skirt.

Mr. and Mrs. Harper don't want to Amy to go through with the plan she has made with her friends, but each has different reasons for that. Mr. Harper is concerned for his daughter's well-being; while this same carnival was in nearby Fairfield the year before, two young girls were murdered and had to be identified through dental records. He doesn't want Amy going near the carnival. While chugging down booze (and watching The Bride of Frankenstein), Mrs. Harper criticizes Amy's taste in men. Buzz works at a gas station, why would she want to date a guy like that?

Buzz seems a bit douchey at first, but that has nothing to do with his job.

Amy tells her parents she's going to the movies. She tries to get Buzz to do that instead of going to the carnival, but he wants to stick to the original plan. He even brushes off Mr. Harper's concern for his daughter, which doesn't sit well with Amy and makes the beginning of their date kind of awkward. But they go ahead and pick up Liz and Richie, then continue on to the carnival.

For more than half of the film, Hooper simply follows Amy, Buzz, Liz, and Richie around the fair while they check out various attractions, play games, ride on some rides, banter, tell jokes, and take breaks to smoke weed. They encounter some creepy, unnerving things along the way, but Hooper holds off on allowing the film to descend into full-on horror.

The "wandering around the carnival" stretch of the film is my favorite part of it. Once the horror really kicks in and the kids are in danger, I'm not as interested as I am when I'm just watching them walk around, taking in the sights. The place is so dirty and off-putting, it's no surprise when bad things start to happen.

I have no such opinion. I'm fully interested and invested throughout the entire movie. It never loses its appeal to me.

One attraction the group checks out is the Freak Animals exhibit, which features things like cows with cleft palates or two heads. The exhibit also includes a deformed human fetus in a jar of formaldehyde.

I've been to a lot of carnivals and amusement parks, but none of them had freak animals or fortune tellers. Or half-naked women.

I am a huge fan of Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and TCM2), and I remember when I first watched this movie that the Freak Animals exhibit scene was when it really clicked with me, because those cows are something that would have fit into the Chainsaws.

The kids also spy on a peep show they're too young to get into.

This especially seems so inappropriate to me. You're not supposed to have a peep show in a place full of kids. Doesn't make any sense.

They watch booze-sipping vampire magician Marlo the Magnificent (William Finley) perform an act that appears to go terribly wrong. They visit fortune teller Madame Zena (Sylvia Miles), who gets very upset when Liz, Richie, and Buzz make a mockery of Amy's palm reading. The last thing Madame Zena tells Amy before the reading comes to an early end is, "A tall dark stranger will enter and change your life."

During a restroom break, Liz suggests that Buzz might be Amy's chance to lose her virginity. A "Bag Lady" (Sonia Zomina) in the restroom doesn't like that kind of talk and warns the girls, "God is watching you!"

Bag Lady is sort of a classic Crazy Ralph-ish doomsayer character, if only she had told the girls "Don't go in the funhouse!" instead of just talking about God.

It still wouldn't have mattered, unfortunately. Bag Lady is almost a bit funny at first, but gets creepier as the movie goes on.

 As the characters pass various attractions, viewers may notice that every one of the barkers is played by the same actor. Outside the Freak Show, the Strip Show, and the Funhouse, it's always actor Kevin Conway, but each time he's made up to look different and he puts on a different voice as he tries to lure people in to check out the attraction. His most famous line is delivered by the Freak Show Barker, who promises that the freaks within are "Alive, alive, alive!"

Amy's group has spent about 25 minutes of the movie going through this unpleasant carnival when Richie has a very bad idea: he thinks they should go into the funhouse, but get off the ride while still inside and spend the night there. Amy is hesitant to go through with this, but she follows her friends. They enter the funhouse, and some of them will never exit. As the barker warns, "There is no escape from the funhouse."

I've been to a lot of small town fairs and carnivals, but I've never gone on one of their funhouse dark rides. Watching this makes me kind of wish I had. There's nothing all that impressive in there, but there really shouldn't be, because this is something that has to be dismantled and moved around all the time. It just provides some weird sights and spooky sounds.

Mine and my brother's favorite thing to do at a carnival was riding the horror/dark rides, which are called Trem Fantasma here in Brazil. The "ghost rides" were the best part, always! I still remember the sounds, sights and smells. Never had any desire to spend the night in one of them though.

For the friends inside the funhouse, getting frisky is the first order of business. But before they can go too far, they're interrupted by the sound of someone entering the structure on the level below the one they're on.

Here's another moment where Hooper makes an unusual choice for his heroine - Amy and Buzz are further along when they're interrupted than Liz and Richie are. For the second time in the movie, Hooper and Berridge choose to show the heroine's breasts. It's always the other way around in slasher movies, so I wonder what the thought process was behind this. Did they know they were breaking the "rules" of the genre, or did it just depend on which of the actresses was willing to do nudity?

I think it had more to do with guessing who'd be the sole survivor. Amy doesn't really seem like the virgin type in some of these scenes.

Someone else was feeling just as horny as they were. The friends watch through the space between floorboards as the guy who was helping people on and off the funhouse ride, a tall fellow wearing a Frankenstein's Monster mask, enters a room below with Madame Zena - who doesn't just make her money telling fortunes. The guy in the mask, who is credited as "The Monster" and played by Wayne Doba, has hired Zena's services.

Zena costs more than the Monster was hoping, and their encounter doesn't go as he hoped it would, either. He ejaculates within seconds of her touching his penis. When Zena reacts poorly to the idea of giving him his money back, he ends up killing her as the couples watch from above, strangling her to death. They bump a fusebox during their struggle, sending sparks flying and causing an electrical malfunction in the funhouse, making the animatronics briefly start up again.

So we get the first kill in this slasher after 49 minutes. Most movies would have had an opening kill sequence that would have let us know exactly what we'd be in for later, but this one is more effective for having the build-up. We got by just fine with the shower fake-out at the beginning.

It wasn't until recently that it occurred to me it takes that long for the first kill to take place. Never was, and still isn't a problem in any way. I am too into it the way it is to think that it's missing anything.

As it turns out, the Funhouse Barker is the Monster's father, and the Monster gets in trouble when he shows his dad what happened to Zena. Through the Barker's dialogue we get confirmation that the Monster has killed people before, including those girls Amy's father had heard about. He's not an outright homicidal maniac, he just doesn't fit into the world and can be driven to violence very easily. It seems his libido is his greatest problem. He wants to have sex, but he's terribly disfigured so most people think he's a freak or are just terrified of him. So his quest for sex ends up with the females getting killed. The Barker doesn't mind so much when it's locals, although it rattled him when the Monster killed a couple Girl Scouts in Memphis, but killing one of the carnival family is crossing the line.

The way the Monster is presented is somewhat reminiscent of Leatherface in Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Like Leatherface, the Monster lives in fear of an overbearing family member, and he mainly communicates with grunts and growls, only managing to get a couple words out. Some of the Barker's lines are similar to ones that were spoken to Leatherface as well. "Wrecking my place of business, ain't you got no respect?" When things get really heated between the two, the Barker can get the Monster to hit himself rather than him doing the hitting.

Again, this is stuff I love here because I loved the same sort of thing in Texas Chainsaw Massacre and it's Hooper doing it again. He could bring this kind of madness to the screen like nobody else.

I've always been a Tobe Hooper fan, and I love Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but The Funhouse will always be my favorite Hooper film. I absolutely adore it.

That Frankenstein's Monster mask doesn't stay on for the whole movie, and when it comes off we see exactly why the Monster has trouble getting laid. His head looks like it wanted to split into two but stopped early in the process, just leaving him with an extra-wide face and a few noses. He's ghostly pale, with fangs, red eyes, and white hair. The details of his disfigurement add up to make him resemble a bat.

The Funhouse isn't often referenced as one of the horror genre's greats, but that moment when the Monster rips off his mask and lets out a shriek as we get our first look at him is up there with the classics for me.

The movie is fun yet pretty terrifying at times. A lot of scenes have that effect on me.

The film fully switches into slasher gear once the Barker and the Monster realize they're not alone in the funhouse - and that Richie stole all their money in the time between Zena's death and the Barker's arrival.

To think that Buzz seemed to be the jerk to me at first. Richie is much worse, and not very bright at all.

The Barker knows these intruders will have to be killed and disposed of, but the Monster is reluctant to go through with the plan, even though he already killed one person that night. The Barker has a quiet, heart-to-heart chat with him to convince him to take part in the murders. He apologizes for being abusive sometimes, blaming it on alcohol and the fact that life has been hard for them. The Monster's mother isn't around, his brother Tad is the fetus on display in the Freak tent...

That's a great scene, with some excellent acting from Conway.

Disturbingly good.

Things will be fine for the Monster and his father after they do this "one bad thing". So they set out to kill the couples, who are trapped inside the funhouse.

Amy never noticed, but Joey actually crawled out his bedroom window and followed her to the carnival. While she was hanging out with her friends, Joey was having his own side adventures - including taking a trip through the funhouse and getting a gun pulled on him by a creepy old guy who passes him on the road.

I don't feel bad for him!

After the carnival closes for the night, and despite the fact that he gets scared by the Bag Lady, Joey continues to wander around the place because he suspects that his sister is still inside the funhouse. Most viewers likely expect Joey to be the key to his sister's salvation, but Hooper and screenwriter Larry Block subvert expectations. Joey's time at the carnival ends up having zero impact on the fate of the people in the funhouse.

Useless little creep. I still don't feel bad for him.

Lurking around the funhouse isn't a good idea, and Joey has a scary run-in with the Monster right before he's discovered by another carnival employee. When his parents are called to the carnival to pick him up, he doesn't voice his suspicion that Amy is in the funhouse. Through a large fan in the side of the funhouse, Amy sees that her parents are at the carnival and cries out to her father, but her voice can't be heard outside. Nobody in her family is going to get her out of this place, and since she's supposed to be staying at Liz's house they're not going to be looking for her any time soon.

The scene where Amy sees her parents and tries to get them to hear and help her is truly great. It's heartbreaking to see hope slowly fading from her eyes.

I don't really understand what's going on with Joey. A horror fan shouldn't go comatose just because he saw a real monster. He has an audio flashback to Amy threatening that she was going to get even with him after the prank at the beginning, did he think this was all a trick?

I'm not sure. Sometimes I wonder whether or not the carnival employee molested him. And why wouldn't he say anything to his  parents? Is he worse than I think or just a little coward? Or both.

One-by-one, characters are killed off, with not even Liz's offer to make the Monster "feel good" for free bringing an end to the bloodshed.

Liz was so close, it really did seem she might have been able to stop the Monster, who becomes increasingly more disgusting during this scene.

This is all building up to the confrontation the audience has been anticipating since the beginning. Hooper and Block took some unexpected steps getting there, but Amy is the heroine who faces the Monster in the end, taking on a character even scarier than her brother.

Not an easy task! I find it scary that such a small place becomes a maze at the end, which makes me compare it to Amy's state of mind entering this final confrontation.

I like The Funhouse, although the stalk and slash sequence in the funhouse is mostly underwhelming to me. I love the build-up, I love the moments between the Barker and the Monster, but I feel like there could have been some better payoff once the Monster and the Barker start going after the couples.

The Funhouse is one of my favorite horror movies of all time. My brother and I used to watch it very often as kids. Dubbed in Portuguese, titled Pague para Entrar, Reze para Sair (pay to get in, pray to get out) I guess it made us think that this could happen in real life, since we'd go to carnivals ourselves. Back then we weren't focusing on the fact that the Monster couldn't really be a "person" or that the axe inside the funhouse ride would never be real. But still, even now, it remains at the top for me.

I'm a little surprised that the kills in this film aren't bloodier and more detailed than they are, but that's a sign that it was already in the works before Friday the 13th was released. I think Universal would have encouraged Hooper to try to match up with that film's kills if it had come after. Since it didn't, Hooper was in Chainsaw 1 mode and this is not a gory movie. The most appalling sight in it is the Monster's face, an effect that was created by Rick Baker, who would win the first of several Oscars the following year for his work on An American Werewolf in London.

I've always found Hooper's movies seriously underrated. Most of them deserve more praise than they get. He did the whole lunatic/bizarre/deformed bit really well. The Funhouse didn't need to be bloody to be disturbing and unique, it works perfectly well the way it is. The terror leans more toward psychological than gory, and there's nothing wrong with that. Plus, if you think about it, there's this somewhat supernatural vibe at times, like when Madame Zena's crystal ball rolls back to her, or when the big doll laughs despite being turned off for hours. There's a bit of everything in this movie, which is one of the reasons I don't go too long without watching it again.

I was also surprised to see that writer Larry Block only has two credits - this movie, and a low budget Captain America movie in 1990. This seemed like the work of someone who had a lot more experience, even if it is a very straightforward story. Block put it together well, and threw some curveballs at the audience here and there.

Block's script was so simple that Dean Koontz crafted his own story around the concept when he was hired to write a novelization (under the pen name Owen West). The resulting book could almost be considered an original, it's so far from the movie. It adds a ton of back story, even going so far to say that the Monster was born deformed and evil because his father was a devil worshiper. It tells us that the mother of the Monster's older brother Tad was Amy and Joey's mother, who killed the baby when she saw it and fled, and that the Barker was purposely out to kill his ex's children as revenge. Apparently The Funhouse was originally supposed to be released in 1980, but when it was pushed back into '81 the novelization was still published in '80, giving some people the impression that the film was based on the book and left out all the details. It was the opposite. Even though the novelization is way off from the movie, information from it has been presented as facts about the movie online - for example, the book is why the Wikipedia page for the movie claims that the Monster is named Gunther Twibunt and the Barker is named Conrad Straker. That's not in Hooper's movie, those names were made up by Koontz. In the movie they are just The Monster and Funhouse Barker.

I've never read it. Doesn't seem like I'm missing out anyway.

I have read Koontz's novelization, but don't remember much about it. I do know I would have thought the movie was ridiculous if it told the story Koontz came up with. As it is, I think the movie is perfectly simple. You don't need any more details about the characters than what Hooper and Block offered.